The Cost of All Things Page 7

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  The bonfire roared in the middle of the crowd. It was a warm night, and the closer I got to the fire the hotter it got. Diana had put me in my jean jacket and I was sweating, but I didn’t take it off; I wrapped it tighter around my shoulders for protection. I may not have a memory of the day my parents died, but I still avoid fire.

  Most people steered away from me. I tried to exude tortured brooding. I don’t know what I would’ve done if a big group had surrounded me, offering their reminiscences and sympathy, like they had at the funeral. I couldn’t take more lying. I wasn’t capable of it, and if I kept trying, someone would be bound to find out the truth.

  She might’ve thought of this. Old Ari, that is. She knew there would be a bonfire. Yet another thing she didn’t bother taking into consideration.

  I hated her.

  I dug the toe of my sneaker into the sand and watched Diana make her way to the keg. I’d come to the party for her sake, but it didn’t look like she needed me at all. Maybe it would’ve been better if I’d stayed home and practiced dancing.

  “Ari?” said a voice by my shoulder. I saw dark hair and a blinding smile and for a second I thought it was Markos, and my shoulders tensed, ready to start lying.

  But it was Markos’s next-oldest brother, Cal, in front of me. “Hi, Cal,” I said, and tried to tell my shoulders to relax. They wouldn’t.

  “It’s been forever,” he said. He had an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth and was playing with a metal zippo lighter with one hand, flipping it open and closed, lighting with a flick of his wrist. The other hand held a beer. “How are you?”

  “I’m . . . fine.”

  “Come on. Spill.”

  I attempted to smile up at him. Cal was the nicest Waters brother. Brian was a know-it-all cop, Dev turned the family charm into sleaze, and Markos—well, he’s Markos. Cal was good-looking like the others, sure, but he was too uncoordinated to do well in sports, and his agreeable nature probably meant he’d have been bad at them anyway. He’d gone through a wild couple of years after his dad died, but that seemed to have gotten the rebellion out of his system.

  But just because he was the least of four evils didn’t mean he was someone I wanted to get confessional with. “Dead boyfriend exemption. I’m allowed to submit half-truths to invasive questions.”

  He laughed, and the cigarette fell out of his mouth. “That’s funny. I forgot you were funny.”

  “Well . . . thanks.”

  “And if you ever need anyone, let me know.”

  I swallowed down a lump in my throat despite myself. “Thanks.”

  He reached out the hand holding the closed lighter, hesitated, and then rested it on my own, which was clenched around the opposite elbow. My bad wrist throbbed, but I couldn’t move to stretch it out. I didn’t know what to do.

  I was not a hugger. But since having my memory ripped from me, I’d been hugged, kissed, squeezed, petted, pinched, smothered, and any number of other space invasions.

  This was what people did when they wanted to express comfort. They touched. I couldn’t twist away. I couldn’t snap and tell them to leave me alone. Their gestures were supposed to make me—the sufferer—feel better. But since I wasn’t suffering—or, at least, not suffering the way they thought I was—I endured their pokes and prods because it made them feel better.

  I held my breath, tried to ignore the pain in my wrist, and waited for Cal to remove his hand. His skin was warm but the lighter was cold metal. I was on three-Mississippi when a girl stood next to him and stared at him until he dropped his hand. I didn’t recognize her.

  “Bye,” she said to him, shooing him away.

  Cal looked like he might say something, then seemed to change his mind. He waved at me with his plastic cup, but he waved too hard and dropped it, then lunged for it and missed. He shrugged and went off in search of another one.

  The girl turned to me. She had short black hair and was wearing a long, elaborately buckled coat and lace-up boots despite the warm night. “Ari Madrigal,” she said. Her face twisted into a scowl. I hoped her scowl was default and not specific to me.

  “That was a little rude,” I said.

  She shrugged. “I need to talk to you. He doesn’t.”

  “Sounds . . . dramatic.”

  I looked around for Diana. I didn’t see her by the keg, and the light of the bonfire only extended so far. Maybe she’d gone down to the water. Or maybe she would arrive any second and rescue me. Cal Waters had found Kay. He lit a cigarette for her and leaned in like they shared a secret. Kay and Cal—that would be an unexpected pairing. I tried to remember if Kay had ever had a boyfriend before, but the girl in front of me snapped her fingers in my face.

  “I will never understand what Win saw in you,” she said.

  So the scowl wasn’t a default. “Excuse me. Do I know you?”

  “Probably not, but I know you.”

  I looked at her more closely. I didn’t recognize her—at least, not her face. Something about her seemed familiar, though. Her expression was fierce, but I remembered . . . lightness. Buoyancy.

  Weird.

  “You owe me five thousand dollars,” she said, unblinking.

  I stared at her right back. “What?”

  “Win’s mother never found it—I’ve been watching. She would’ve spent it by now, but she’s got nothing. He had to have left it with you. But he owed it to me. So pay up.”

  My hands had started to shake. Five thousand dollars. That’s how much my spell to erase Win had cost. I remembered finding an envelope thick with bills at the very back of my closet in a shoebox, and I remembered laying it on the hekamist’s kitchen table. Close-up details, snippets of a movie I’d seen and mostly forgotten. I’d told myself it was my money, my windfall—left by my parents, maybe, like guardian angels. Meant for me.

  But maybe it had been Win’s money. I had no way of knowing.

  “Listen, uh . . .”

  “My name is Echo,” she snapped. “We’ve met. But of course you wouldn’t remember.”

  “Echo,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have any money of Win’s.”

  “You do, though. Or at least you did before you spent it. Didn’t make the connection until I was sure it wasn’t with Win’s mom, but it’s so obvious. You’re going to pay me what I’m owed or I’m going to tell everyone that you erased Win with a spell.”

  I stopped breathing.

  How did she know?

  When my lungs filled with air again, I managed a feeble protest. “I didn’t erase Win.”

  She breathed out through her nose, frustrated. “Don’t even try to play that game because you’ll lose. Pay me my money or everyone finds out.”

  If this girl really knew what I’d done, she could tell everyone. And they’d all know I’d lied to them. They’d find out I couldn’t dance, and that I’d wasted everything for this boy they all still loved.

  “I told you,” I said, trying to sound sure of myself. “I don’t have any money, and I didn’t do that. Didn’t erase him.”

  She took a step back. Licked her chapped lips. “All right then. Prove it. When I met you the first time, what were we doing?”

  “I don’t have to answer—”

  “It’s a simple question, not a trick. Answer me.”

  I tried to turn away but couldn’t pivot in the sand. In a flash, Echo was there, blocking me.

  “Go ahead. Take a guess. When did we meet?”

  Nothing. There was nothing to remember. You couldn’t focus in and piece things together when there was nothing there to piece. “We were on the beach,” I hazarded. “We were hanging out near here.”

  “Lucky guess. Doing what?”

  “Hanging out. Just . . . hanging out.”

  Her hand rose to touch her mouth; she swallowed.
“Nice try.”

  “You must not have made a big impression.”

  “I need that money, Ari.”

  “You can’t prove—”

  “I’m not the one who has to prove anything.” She gestured at the bonfire. “Want me to call over some people, see if your memory works then?”

  Wood snapped in the bonfire. One of Markos’s brothers tossed on fresh fuel. If I had seen Diana out there maybe I would’ve thought of a way out of this. Figured a way to convince Echo I was whole, normal, unblackmailable. Maybe if Diana had been with me I wouldn’t have given up so easily.

  Only Echo was right, of course. I didn’t remember Win.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You’re—what?”

  “I don’t have any more money. It all went to the spell.”

  She seemed shaken for a moment, hands grasping together. “No.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t—”

  “Stop saying that!” Her uncertainty vanished, replaced by the now-familiar glower. “You can get the money. Put some effort into it. If Win came up with the money, you can too.” She nodded, as if this made perfect practical sense. “I’ll give you two weeks, Ari. Five thousand dollars.”

  I nodded back, because there was nothing else I could do, and Echo stepped away. As she got farther away, the party noises seemed to get louder around me, people having fun, going on with their ordinary lives.

  Mine had just gotten complicated. More than I could pretend away.

  I needed to get out of here. Out of this bonfire. Off of this island. Whatever I was feeling—guilt and fear and confusion and worry, plus the ever-present regret of getting the stupid spell in the first place—it was bigger than this bonfire, bigger than Cape Cod.

  Diana could help. I’d tell her the truth and we’d figure out a way through it together. I couldn’t be blackmailed if I told people the truth myself.

  I tried not to trip in the sand as I ran in search of my best friend.

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  I would’ve stayed with Diana, talking, avoiding my brothers, but Ari came and found us—found Diana, that is. She wasn’t looking for me. She said hello and pulled Diana away, and I knew I had no right to complain, so I stayed sitting in the sand.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Ari said, linking her arm with Diana’s. “Let’s drive to Boston and get tattoos.”

  “Really?” Diana said.

  “No, tattoos are too expensive. Let’s go to New York and dance in the Lincoln Center fountain.”

  Diana laughed as if something heavy had been lifted from her shoulders. She glanced at me for a second—with regret, maybe, or disappointment—but she was already following Ari up the dune.

  I didn’t watch her go.

  What was there to regret? All we’d done was talk.

  I watched the crowd as if it were alive, expanding and contracting like a heart. Then I heard a scream. Before I knew I was doing it, I was standing and running to her.

  Diana had tripped and fallen and bashed one side of her face on a cooler so badly it formed an immediate bruise, visible even in the dim light of the bonfire.

  She started crying. Ari stood next to her, just looking, stricken.

  Somehow my arm wrapped around Diana’s shoulder, all tangled up in her long hair, as I kneeled next to her in the sand. I comforted her.

  “It’ll be okay. Shhh, it’s not so bad. That dumbass needs to move his shit, I’m going to kill him. Shhh, shhh. It’s okay.”

  I kneeled next to her, touching her but only to comfort and not because I wanted something, and maybe that meant I was the fakest faker out of all the fakers at this party, in this town, in the world: I was pretending to be someone who gave a shit.

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  I never thought I’d need to go to a hekamist. I’d heard of people getting spells for looks or luck or brains, but if you ask for those things, you must believe you don’t have any to begin with. I wasn’t ugly or dumb or unlucky at all. I was Win Tillman. Varsity shortstop. Boyfriend of the prettiest girl in school. Good grades. Good skin. Good all around. Other people went to hekamists. Not me.

  I mean, Ari had her spell, of course, but she didn’t choose to get it, and she was so young and it was such a long time ago that it wasn’t the same. (For the record I would’ve gotten a spell to erase the sight of my house burning down with my parents inside, too. It’s not something anyone needs in their brain.)

  On one side, there were the spelltakers: kind of silly, kind of sad. On the other side, there was me.

  But then it started changing. The world, or the way I understood it.

  The day after Ari broke down in her bedroom after getting in to the Manhattan Ballet, I had a panic attack and couldn’t go to school. I thought I was dying. I thought I’d absorbed Ari’s misery—Ari, who after that one day, never shed another tear. I was pretty sure my heart was exploding, but I figured my panic would go away as fast as hers did. Faster, because it was only borrowed.

  Then I had another panic attack in band when I couldn’t hit the note. Then, over the next couple of weeks, I had panic attacks in my car, in the shower, and on the floor of my bedroom. The floor of my bedroom, the floor of my bedroom, the floor of my bedroom again and again and again. I got to know the bedroom floor very well. Just the feel of the scratchy wall-to-wall carpeting could make me start to lose my breath.

  I couldn’t sleep.

  Three days in a row, I stayed in bed until two or three p.m. and my mom called me in sick, but I wasn’t sick, I was crying. I cried so much I got dehydrated and fainted. My mom took me to the walk-in clinic, but when I was there I felt fine and looked like myself.

  I’d always been prone to sad periods, days of introspection, thinking about things so hard they disassembled and broke into pieces. Markos would call me morose, but he could always cheer me up. This was different.

  Nothing was wrong. I was wrong.

  I looked up pills online. Sometimes when you’re young the pills have the opposite effect—they make you sadder, more likely to kill yourself. I also heard they also make you fat, and I was scared to not be me both inside and out. So I didn’t tell my mom how bad it got.

  I told Ari. Of course I told Ari; we told each other everything. But I probably didn’t tell her completely. I never said, “I think about killing myself.” I said, “I think about dying,” which is totally different because everyone thinks about death sometimes, but not everyone imagines going through with it, picking a belt and beam or a razor and tub.

  Not that I thought about that every day. No. Most days I was pretty much fine. I was best with Markos. Pretending was easiest with Markos because I’ve known him forever, and everything’s a show with him anyway. The Markos Waters Hour. All I had to do was show up and recite my lines.

  It was hard everywhere else. So hard. It hurt to breathe sometimes. My mom took me an allergist that she couldn’t afford because it was out-of-network. But it wasn’t allergies or the environment or gluten. It was all in me. My mind wouldn’t cooperate. Wouldn’t recognize all that was wonderful about being Win Tillman.

  In the fall of junior year, this girl Katelyn had come back from summer break beautiful, and looking at her successful spellwork after my panic attacks came on, I started to consider it. Going to a hekamist, that is. I’d barely made it through a week where I thought I was literally drowning and this girl Katelyn—Ari and Diana called her Kay when they started spending time together—tossed her newly shiny hair at me and seemed fine. I asked Ari what she thought about it.

  “I guess if it makes her happy,” Ari said.

  “Everyone should do it if it gives you that rack,” Markos said, but I know how to speak Markos, and that actually mean
t she’s desperate.

  But I was desperate, too.

  There weren’t that many hekamists left—they were dying off. It had been illegal to join a coven for twenty years. There were probably only ten thousand left in the US and only the one in Cape Cod, an old lady who’d been there forever. So I was surprised when I went to the hekamist’s by school and the only person in the house was my age.

  The girl said her name was Echo, and I liked her right away. Not liked her in a romantic way—those days I couldn’t even make it happen with Ari, who I loved—but she seemed kind. On her kitchen table there was a half-eaten apple next to an array of playing cards; I’d interrupted a game of solitaire. There was something normal about that, I thought. Something human.

  I sat opposite the solitaire spread. Echo sat across from me. I wasn’t very good at noticing my surroundings, but I could tell this place was run-down and barely big enough for one person, let alone a family. The couch separated the kitchen from the living room, sitting crooked in the open space. I remembered that because it seemed like you’d always be tripping over it. I knew about small spaces, and furniture that didn’t quite fit. I knew about the cheap construction and old carpet that never smelled quite right. Those things made me feel at home.

  “Where’s the hekamist?” I said in order to stop thinking about anything else.

  “Out,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  A pause, seconds dripping like a leaky faucet.

  “So you’d like a spell.” With her fingertips, Echo picked up the apple core and tossed it in the trash. “What’s wrong with you?”

  I could feel something crack and break in my chest; I was going to start crying again for sure. “I’m . . . sad,” I said.

  Ridiculous. Such a small, stupid word that in no way touched upon the truth. She should’ve laughed me out of her tiny apartment.

  She didn’t. “How sad?”